I am under house arrest. I like to pretend I did something terribly illegal, but ethically moral—a romantic crime, if you will—and that despite the fact that I have to wear this ankle bracelet and I can’t go past the mailbox, it’s all in service to a higher good and I feel noble about it.
It’s true that on many days I don’t go past the mailbox—and if possible I get someone else to check the mail. But I don’t really wear an ankle bracelet. I just have toddler twins, and it’s December in the Wasatch, which means that 25 to 75 percent of my family is sick at all times, and very germy. Since September I can count on one hand the number of days every member of my family has felt baseline healthy. Recently it occurred to me that this isn’t a string of bad luck; this is the new normal.
Even if we feel okay to leave the house, it’s in the single digits out there and my kids, like me, don’t do freezing. The can’t keep a mitten on, for starters, and when their cheeks start to turn scarlet, that’s when the whining usually begins. Sometimes, we go out in the back yard because we really, really need fresh air and a change of perspective. It takes 45 minutes to get dressed to go out in the back yard. We typically last about 7 minutes, and at least one of them is crying by the time we come back in.
Last Sunday, we left sick Phoebe home with my visiting mom and strapped Eliza into the fancy frame baby carrier. It’s basically a chariot, you guys. The thing is so comfortable (I bet) and Eliza was laughing and smiling for the first 15 minutes. We haven’t had a chance to use it much, so it’s still a novelty. But then we got to the park, and she started to realize it was seven degrees out. That’s when the whining turned to crying turned to real tears freezing to crystals on her poor scarlet cheeks. She screamed the entire way home, in Jon’s ear. We started drinking early that night.
They don’t go to daycare or preschool yet, so the girls don’t have to leave the house, like, ever. Once in a while, when everyone is feeling okay, I send them to the playgroup at the church down the street with my nanny while I’m home slaving away on technology copy or editing someone’s fascinating memoir. And in theory, we also go to a music class once a week. But the season of the plague has made mincemeat of that plan for the most part. Generally, we stay indoors and stare wistfully through the Christmas tree boughs at the snow falling outside.
Me, I work at home, so leaving the house has never been a big priority. I am a big fan of comfortable daytime leisurewear and a constant infusion of jasmine tea between 9am and 4pm, so working at home as a freelance writer really suits me. Still, I sometimes wonder if the complete lack of sunshine and outdoor stimulation might be getting to me a little bit? I forget to take my 4000 IUs of Vitamin E that my acupuncturist recommended and my skin starts looking pretty sallow.
I used to be a real self-care person. I was very passionate about fresh air and would insist that if I didn’t get nine hours plus of sleep a night, life would simply not be worth living. Then I entered this prison that I am currently ensconced in. It’s a prison of love, to be clear, and I willingly jailed myself. My priorities have shifted and I’m no longer obsessed with proper self-care, although I miss it, wistfully, the way one misses youth—with nostalgia and the knowledge that science prevents its return.
